Annoyed at HA. No heating

[TurboMam]

Yesterday my boiler broke.
Rang HA around 3pm. Guy came at 7.30 obviously in a massive rush. Asked if he wanted a brew, his words were 'Nooo need to get in and out so I can go home'
He fiddled about and the boiler fired up.
He was trying to leave before I could even ask what was wrong, he shouted something about Sparks as he ran to van.

Literally 5 mins later the same error started flashing up and boiler was dead again. No heat, no hot water.

I called the HA at 8pm. They said they would get someone out between 10pm and 6am.

So I slept on the couch so I didn't miss them. I was absolutely freezing.

No one turned up

It's snowed over night.

I have 4 children.

I've been trying to get through for an hour now.

I know they're busy and I'm grateful I can get help but it's literally freezing, we can see our breath inside the house!

I'm just venting.

I'm mostly annoyed that it waited till the coldest days of the year to break 😭😂😂

Check your condensate pipe isn’t frozen which is common in these cold temps. It’s the pipe which goes outside and takes away excess water. Boil the kettle a few times and pour it over the pipe outside whilst trying to fire your boiler up. It needs to stay warm so it doesn’t freeze again.

It's an IT crowd joke. But it's a valid point OP as most error codes can be reset to give you heating temporarily.
Hope it gets fixed soon!

My HA got around this by giving me the world's smallest electric heater. This was a few years ago though.

I feel your pain OP. My boiler broke down on the coldest day of the year, that year. They looked at it, condemned it and told me it would be a week before they could put in a new one....5 days later we had very heavy snowfall, which meant they couldn't get the new one put in for another 10 days. 2 sodding weeks in sub-zero temperatures with a heater that gave as much warmth as a candle....I've never been so cold.

Can we stop telling OP lies about what she can expect? The 24hour thing especially. The actual wording if 'reasonable time' which some interpret at 24 hours, not because it is law but because that would be the ideal solution, especially when it is cold.

Saying your landlord should be able to get heating fixed in 24 hours is NOT the law. A reasonable expectation is that the LL would get an engineer bout as soon as one could be booked; would provide electric heaters if there was an anticipated delay in getting parts. And good communication.

But it simply isn't true that there is a legal obligation for that time scale, not even for HAs.

www.ashmanssolicitors.com/articles/how-long-does-my-housing-association-have-to-fix-my-boiler/#:~:text=Yes%2C%20a%20housing%20association%20or,must%20repair%20a%20broken%20boiler.

Are you on pre-pay meter by chance OP?

I'm on a smart meter.

Reseting it makes it appear to work but within 15 mins it goes off and the error starts again.

That's why the engineer left yesterday thinking it was fixed.

I can start it up after resting it but a few mins later it's broke again.

My son is a call centre ‘emergency call handler’. One of their contracts is for a large housing association. They are over-whelmed with heating calls at the moment. He spent several hours on-hold yesterday, trying to get through to contractors to go out to people having problems. At the point the contractor picked up, their system essentially kicks a caller out when they have logged a job - he had over 20 calls to log and he was automatically cut off after the first. So he had to sit on hold for over an hour at a time to be able to speak to a contractor. It’s bonkers but hopefully gives you an indication of how the system might be working. Shouting all call centre staff who are as frustrated as you are doesn’t help and threatening complaints and actually making complaints only serves to slow them down further.

Did you check the pipe outside, this sounds like the issue we had with it

We get this a lot and used to spend ages when it was ultra cold unfreezing it and trying to get it not to freeze. Now when it’s really cold we pull out the plastic pipe from the boiler, insert a shorter plastic pipe and run it into a 10 gallon container. We have to empty the container but it’s less of a pain in arse than unfreezing the pipe

Is there enough water in the system OP? There are two switches under the boiler which you turn clockwise to bring water levels up

Yes my ex husband warmed all the pipes last night.

Yes the water pressure is in the green zone.

I think it might because I've not had the heating on at all yet.

Maybe the systems just been too cold one the snow kicked in to start up properly.

Yesterday was the first time I've tried to put the heating on. I use the water all the time obviously.

I'm going to try and keep it on low most of the week to keep it working.

It's not lies.

Under the Decent Homes Standards which all social housing landlords are subject to, no heating or hot water when outdoor temperatures are in the minuses would be classed as a Category One hazard meaning the landlord has to urgent remedial action. The sector standard for this is within 24hrs for repair and heaters provided if a repair will take longer than this. The definition of "reasonable" must take into account weather conditions so in the height of summer the heating wouldn't necessarily be an emergency repair (hot water would be though), in December and -3 outside, it is an emergency repair. Landlord needs to provide heaters if they're unable to repair.

All of which is another way of saying precisely what I said, what the link I provided says. But without the assertion that this is what the landlord MUST do.

OP has no legal comeback because her heating was not fixed within 24 hours. That is what I am saying. The law does not say that, even in the harshest weather, heating MUST be fixed withing any time scale other than reasonable. For obvious reasons.

I outlined the actual law, the usual procedure and included legal explanation of the law, with all that can be reasonably expected, including an explanation of that 24hour period.

I am saying that when people post the MUST message they are adding aggravation to an already aggravating situation. Why do that?

I managed to say it without calling anyone a liar though

How are you getting on? Hope you're warm enough as it's got drastically colder here, I don't know about where you are.

Be glad your HA still classes no heating or hot water as an emergency...my boiler broke in February and my HA was happy to leave me a month.

Give them a chance to fix it. I think them coming out I'm the middle of the night was unrealistic. Ring them again today

Check your contents insurance if you have it. Mine will pay for a hotel if the heating cannot be fixed in 48 hours.

Isn’t e133 the pipes have frozen, likely as the heating as been off?

If you’re on a prepayment meter and have run out of credit sometimes you have to open the valves on the meter when you top it up again. From
memory I think you have to hold down one for the buttons.